Review: Jurassic World by Brickman (Melbourne) – an expensive LEGO Jurassic Park romp
April 19, 2021
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Ryan McNaught aka Brickman is Australia’s only LEGO Certified Professional and host of LEGO Masters Australia has an all-new exhibition running in Melbourne – Jurassic World by Brickman.
Brickman and his team takes his talents to Isla Nublar and Jurassic World, with a licensed exhibition featuring larger-than-life LEGO dinosaurs from Isla Nublar.
The exhibition is running until 31 May 2021 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, and you can purchase tickets online from Ticketek. You can book timeslots online, and there isn’t a time limit there, and while I was there, no one chased me out.
- Adults – $35
- Junior ( 3 to 15 years Old) – $25
- Concession ( Students, Pensioners, Seniors) – $27.0
- Family ( 2 Adults+ 2 Kids or 1 Adult + 3 Kids) (Admits 4) – $95.00
I visited over the Easter long weekend on the 2nd of April, and only brought my 4-year old daughter. Wife didn’t tag along as the tickets were pricey and we decided to save some money – $60 for the both of us was dear enough already.
Read on to see if it’s worth your hard-earned cash to visit!
The timing of this exhibition feels like it’s been in the works for a while – we were due a 3rd Jurassic World movie in the Summer of 2021 before Covid wrecked the entire movie industry’s release schedule, and with LEGO Masters Australia set to air, it does seem like the show was meant to capitalise on Ryan McNaught’s profile on TV, as well as serve as a tie-in to the Jurassic World movie.
That said, at least the show is going ahead and with Melbourne now Covid-free, it was nice to be able to experience it and not have any severe visitor limits despite it being indoors.
If you’d like to watch a walkthrough of the entire Brickman Jurassic World exhibition, be sure to also check out my video on Youtube.
At the start, as you’re queueing to get in, there’s a topographic map of Isla Nublar with dinos and small builds sprinkled across the island, including some neat references like this Jurassic Park jeep.
The start of the exhibition starts off really strongly, and will delight any Jurassic Park fan – you walk through this massive brick-built Jurassic World gates and as the music plays, it’s really not that hard to feel hyped at what’s beyond the gates.
The first “room” you walk into is the Control Room, which is mostly for kids as there are several build stations set up around the circular room where you can build out structure on islands.
As this was the first interactive part of the exhibition, my daughter got really immersed with playing with LEGO here, and it took up quite a lot of time.
Thankfully, there are some classic minifigure-scale Brickman builds in display cases here to enjoy while kids build away.
After this, you head into “The Lab” where dino-science happens, and you get to enjoy references of how Jurassic World scientists extract DNA from bugs encased in amber to clone dinosaurs.
There’s a large collaborative mosaic that you can contribute to, and there are more build stations here – where you can play God and design your own dinosaurs.
Next up, you walk through the Baby Dinosaurs section, where you walk under an absolutely gargantuan Brachiosaurus made out of bright green Duplo bricks!
This was actually my favourite part of the exhibition, and I really loved the scale of the Brachiosaurus, and how it’s designed, where you only see the bottom half as you walk underneath it, and how creative the neck/head placement is.
Under the Brachiosaurus tunnel, you get to catch a view of all sorts of baby dinosaurs, including this adorable Pterodactyl hatching out of its egg.
Plenty more Duplo dinos, which I also liked because of how they nail the “blocky”, pixelated LEGO look at this scale.
More play and build stations are found here, this one with Duplo bricks for younger builders.
Moving on to the next room is more kid-focused play activities, this time to track dinosaurs on Isla Nublar. The lighting and screens here are pretty neat.
Here, young builders are encouraged to build dinosaur footprints out of LEGO, and you can display their creations on the walls after they’re done.
Next, we have the Velociraptor enclosure, where we have these “life-sized” Raptors from Jurassic World – you may remember them from the movie – Blue, Charlie (in the cages/muzzles) and Delta (the green one) standing tall and are perfect for photos.
Technically these aren’t life-sized as Velociraptors are quite small, and the Jurassic Park movies exaggerated their sizes for dramatic effect. Velociraptors were likely the size of large turkeys.
These Raptor models are great, and you can get real close to them to admire the moulding and details.
Before the final room and grand finale, you get to admire this massive LEGO Mosasaurus mosaic in the corridor.
It’s pretty cool, and the lightingeffect here amps up the dramatic shadows, but I liked how grand and vast this piece was.
The final section is reserved for the most recognizable and impressive display – a life-sized re-creation of the Jurassic Park Jeep Wrangler, and of course a massive T-Rex chasing in the background.
While the builds are suitably impressive and spectacularly detailed, the finale to Brickman Jurassic World is all about social media – this entire section is designed for you to snap photos and videos to share online.
Whether you hop into the driver’s seat of the Jeep Wrangler, or strike a pose next to the T-Rex – you’re almost guaranteed to get some good snaps to share on your Instagram or Facebook.
You get half a T-Rex, and I was really impressed by the way it was able to be suspended – there are a LOT of bricks used.
It looks great from all angles, and you also get up close and personal with its massive jaws.
Really cool just how detailed they got its tongue to look, and the brick-built textures are really nice.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get a photo of myself here as my daughter is only 4 and I don’t trust her photography skills, but the entire set up makes for a nice photo to keep as a memento of your visit.
Final thoughts: And that’s really it! For many people, the price is going to be the biggest impediment as it’s not a cheap outing at all.
The experience is really designed for younger kids, and families with dino-obsessed kids are the primary demographic.
I do like that there were plenty of thematic building and activity stations to keep the kids occupied, as that drastically lengthens the overall time you spend there and adds to the experience.
It would be nice if there was something that you could build and take home, as a souvenir, especially with how much tickets costs.
For adults, while the large models and builds are suitably impressive, for $35 a ticket, it’s quite an expensive way to spend less than an hour. For that price, you’d probably have a better time visiting your local LEGO show as you get a far larger variety of builds, models and displays.
Without the appeal of building activities, it’ll take about 20-30 minutes from start to finish, photos and selfies included – as the models are really large, they’re not exactly designed to be dwelled upon – as there are hardly any funny Easter Eggs or scenes that require much attention – in fact, the photos that I took, and video walkthrough will give you enough of a sense of how the builds look like.
It’s also very one-dimensional given the Jurassic World/Park theme, so if dinosaurs aren’t your thing, there isn’t the “build anything out of LEGO” appeal that you get from some of Brickman’s previous shows.
Even for families, it’s a hard exhibition to recommend, unless your kids really love LEGO and dinosaurs. It is a novelty, but for a family of 4, $95 on a 2-hour activity is really quite expensive, especially when you can get an arguably better dinosaur experience at the Melbourne Museum – the same price will get you Museum Membership for an entire year, and delivers way more educational value.
Unless you have plenty of disposable income that spending AU$95 on an afternoon won’t dent your finances, it’s an expensive romp into LEGO Jurassic World.
While the models, and layout are quite a novel experience to view up close, I’m just not sure if it’s worth the ticket entry. If the tickets were priced at $20 for adults and $15 for kids, it would be a much, much easier recommendation to make.
I also expected a slightly cheaper ticket entry given this is essentially a giant advertisement for Jurassic World, but I also acknowledge that it takes hundreds of hours of work designing these models, and setting up the show and paying for the staff to man it.
Update: Did a bit more digging here, and apparently, the Federal Government (ie: us taxpayers) chipped in a whopping $668,000 to the Brickman Jurassic World Experience. Wow. No words but the ticket price is even more unjustifiable.
There was zero transparency of this government grant anywhere in the show, so personally, this is pretty sneaky.
The Jurassic World by Brickman Exhibition will run until 31 May 2021 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, and you can purchase tickets online from Ticketek.
Thanks for reading this review of my experience at the Jurassic World by Brickman exhibition!
To see more of Brickman’s previous work and exhibitions, read my review of
Would love to hear from you if you’ve visited and what your thoughts on the show was in the comments!
